


Inflorescence

by Lapsed_Scholar



Category: The X-Files
Genre: 5 Things, F/M, Flowers, Fluff, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Sweetness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-18 20:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20645069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapsed_Scholar/pseuds/Lapsed_Scholar
Summary: Mulder brings her flowers. In accordance with their singular custom, they have come to a silent mutual agreement not to acknowledge this fact.





	Inflorescence

**Author's Note:**

> Short and sweet and not what I thought I was writing this week.

Mulder brings her flowers. In accordance with their singular custom, they have come to a silent mutual agreement not to acknowledge this fact.

1.

It started when she was Sick (capital S Sick: dying of cancer). He brought flowers to her at the hospital, deflected his conventionality with a joke about stealing them from a patient, so neither of them would have to acknowledge the feelings that accompanied them. As she endured her treatments, kept working cases, had stints in the hospital, the flowers kept appearing. She never caught him at it, and he never left a note. When she returned to work following her diagnosis, a slender vase with three blue irises was waiting on her usual chair. A sprig of lavender was sitting in a glass on her kitchen counter after she came home from one hospital stay, during which she’d resorted to asking him if he could bring her pajamas to her. When she returned to work following her remission, a bouquet of bright yellow daffodils adorned her new desk.

2.

He continued the habit after her remission; flowers will appear sometimes when she’s sick (not Sick) or sad or hurt. On the anniversary of Melissa’s death, he leaves a small bunch of poppies tied with a ribbon tucked into her pencil holder. Once, when her cramps were too bad for even her to power through and pretend, she called in with a vague stomach ache and curled on her sofa with her hot water bottle and tried not to let herself dwell on the pointlessness of her reproductive system. Mulder stopped by during lunch to bring her soup and violets. (She has never discussed her menstrual cycle with him. Ever.)

When she’s hurt in the line of duty, he’s a constant hospital presence, surpassing even her mother in visiting time. He brings flowers each time (once she’s out of danger; once he’s been persuaded to leave her bedside), nonchalantly setting them on her dresser or bedside table if she’s awake, leaving them for her to discover if she’s not. 

After she was shot by Peyton Ritter, she received visits and flowers from a penitent Ritter and from her mother. Mulder was again a constant presence. (She wondered at the fact that he’d apparently taken indefinite leave from work, but she didn’t ask and he didn’t offer.) It took a few days after she had regained the ability to think rationally to recognize, nestled amidst Ritter’s dramatic apology and her mother’s tasteful basket, a glass vase that was apparently gaining one daisy each day. She counted them against her days of hospitalization: six so far. Her mother (currently relieving Mulder at her bedside) caught her musing and remarked, “I believe those are from Fox,” in a tone that implied that Dana ought to have known that already.

3\. 

He doesn’t limit his post-case botany to cases that injure her. In fact, the first flower she got after the daffodils was an exotic, elegant bird-of-paradise flower, slipped into the folder on her desk that contained the beginnings of her write-up on a phenomenon that was certainly _not mothmen or mutated Spanish conquistadors, Mulder_. It was the sort of gesture that could suggest _Thank you for singing to me in the forest_ or _I’m sorry I fled from your wine and cheese reception_ or maybe even _Your theories are starting to make me feel besotted_ (but that was veering into dangerously personal territory).

After she sprung him from the psych ward in Chicago, saved him from Pincus or whatever buglike thing she saw (or didn’t see: It was dark), she was worried about him. He had only just finished with the New Spartan case; it hadn’t been a good month for him. He was the best friend she’d ever had, but she didn’t know how to check on him—he’d called her his one in five billion, but she didn’t know what that meant to them, either. She settled for visiting his apartment that weekend—just a casual visit between friends; nothing to see here—and bringing him a box of soothing tea. When she got to work the following Monday, he was already gone (some meeting with Skinner), but there was a teacup full of jasmine and forget-me-nots sitting on her desk next to a cup of coffee from her favorite local shop.

When she fished him out of the Bermuda Triangle, they no longer had an office to themselves, so he couldn’t exactly leave flowers on her desk. She found them in her car instead: hyacinths on her dashboard, draped above her steering wheel. (He must’ve snuck them there when he went out for lunch and vague “errands” that day.) She decided they meant _Thank you for saving my ass_ instead of that other dangerous, intoxicating, forbidden sentiment he’d recently expressed.

The exile from their office that began with flames ended the same way. She might have thrown a dozen red roses at his head after their distinctly _personal_ argument over his ex and his excessive trust. She wasn’t in any sort of humor to accept the standard, over-the-top, showy “I fucked up” gesture of male guilt from him. But she stood for a long time in the middle of their new/old basement office, gazing at the clear water glass with a single, delicate, humble sprig of Queen Anne’s lace that was placed directly in the center of her newly-regained desk. She was more deeply moved than she wanted to admit.

4.

Evidence suggests that Mulder is a romantic to some degree. He is, however, an eccentric one. They don’t really go out on proper dates, and he hasn’t brought her flowers for any of the usual holidays. Valentine’s Day is right out. He did start buying her birthday presents (odd, meaningful presents) after he stopped pretending to forget her birthday, but he has yet to bring her birthday flowers.

The morning after a sweet night at the ball field, he nonchalantly handed her a red tulip along with the casefile he wanted her to examine. She was surprised by his boldness, but he turned quickly away from her inquisitive gaze to fiddle with the slides in the projector. Shortly afterward, an even sweeter night yielded to a very early morning when she found a long-stemmed red rose tucked into the jacket she had so hastily discarded by his door. The first morning she stayed the entire night, he went out to get her bagels for breakfast, which he garnished with a morning glory beside her plate.

5.

She wonders how he chooses them. She puzzles over it in her spare time, checks out books from the library on floral symbolism. But the books contradict each other, and Mulder’s base of knowledge is so broad, she can’t even reliably assume that he’s pulling from Western traditions. (She’ll ask him years later, and he’ll smile at her and shrug and say, “I just thought they were pretty,” and she won’t know whether she fully believes him or not.)

She wishes she knew, though, because it would make her current project easier. She’s gotten him back: his beautiful, brilliant mind is his own once again, and he’s returning to work tomorrow. The past few weeks have been lonely without him, the office quiet and empty. She’s seen him outside of work, of course; she’s stayed so frequently and for such long periods in his apartment that if they’re currently being surveilled, their secret is out by now. But she’ll be happy to have him back in his element, looks forward to working together again with a giddiness that she will never, ever admit to him. (He’ll be able to tell, but he won’t tell her that he can tell.) So she gets him flowers and leaves them on his desk and hopes the gesture adequately expresses how much she’s missed him and how grateful she is that he’s back to being himself. (He’s probably gotten that point, with the way she’s been clinging to him in her off-hours, but reinforcement never hurts.)

She takes him to work in the morning; she insists on driving, but she does allow him to walk behind her and gallantly usher her first through doors. He stops stock-still in the doorway of their office and stares at his desk. It’s mostly the same as when he’d left it, but she’s tidied it a little, and there’s a vase of sunflowers in the middle of it. She peeks back at him from her position in the middle of the room, watches as his open mouth curves up into a smile, then a grin that lights up the office more than the sunflowers do. (She may be biased.) He crosses the room to her and pulls her into a hug, resting his cheek on the top of her head.

He says, simply, “_Scully_,” but she thinks he gets the message.

**Author's Note:**

> I have now read so many websites on the meanings of flowers, and they rarely agree. I will tell you that there's more to Mulder's floral choices than he lets on, though.


End file.
